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Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Yankee Offense at the All Star Break

I'm going to use the All Star Break to explain a little bit about the way I rank players' offensive values. As most regular readers know, I'm a big fan of linear weights.

The concept for linear weights was introducted by Pete Palmer in his ground-breaking book, The Hidden Game of Baseball. In a nutshell, linear weights assigns a marginal value to just about every event that can happen on the baseball field, both good and bad. You can incorporate batting, baserunning, defense, etc., to really look at the overall contribution that a player is providing to his team.

Instead of getting too heavy into the mechanism of LWTS, I'd just point anyone that is interested in the guts behind it to this link. Today I'm just going to focus on the offensive portion of the Yankees' linear weights.

The formula I use was refined by Tango Tiger and uses the following weights:

Batting Runs(BR) = (.47 x H) + (.38 x 2B) + (.55 x 3B) + (.93 x HR) + (.33 x (BB + HBP)) + .22 x SB + (-.38 x CS) + (-.1 x (AB - H))

The one change I make is I add GDP into the outs factor (AB - H). You could also add reaching on errors although I tend to ignore that out of simplicity.

Anyway, unless a player is really bad, they will have a positive value for BR, because any positive contribution creates some kind of run value. The only Yankee with a negative BR is Wil Nieves, and he's only at -1.

Once you have a players BR, you can do a couple of things. The first thing is to compare them to the average batter, regardless of position. This is useful for just figuring out the net value of a player, and for when you want to look at moving players around the different positions, as well as for direct comparisons.

The other thing that you can do, is position-adjust the players. As should be fairly obvious to most baseball fans, the average shortstop does not hit as well as the average first baseman (unless it's the Yankees), so offense from the shortstop position is harder to find, and therefore more valuable. So what I do is calculate the BR at every defensive position. I then divide BR by plate appearances, and I subtract the average BR/PA from a player's BR/PA, and then multiply by the number of plate appearances that the player has had. This tells you how much better a player has been compared to an average player over the same playing time.

Let's run through an example with Derek Jeter. Jeter's raw BR this season so far is 60. Divided by his plate appearances, he creates .152 BR/PA. The average AL SS has created 596 BR this eason, over 5194 PA, a BR/PA of .115. So Jeter's position-adjusted batting runs above average would be (.152-.115) x his PA, which comes out to about 15 runs above the average AL SS this year. That makes him the third most valuable offensive Yankee this season, behind Alex Rodriguez (the most valuable offensive player in the league regardless of position by linear weights), and Jorge Posada.

So, here are the Yankees' offensive players sorted by most valuable in position-adjusted batting runs.

Last	pBRaa	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	K	BA	OBP	SLG
Rodriguez	33	85	380	319	79	101	21	0	30	86	47	71	.317	.413	.665
Posada	19	82	331	291	46	95	25	0	9	48	34	61	.327	.399	.505
Jeter	15	85	395	348	57	117	23	3	5	44	35	47	.336	.408	.463
Matsui	8	73	316	274	46	75	19	0	11	53	36	38	.274	.358	.464
Giambi	1	45	179	149	19	39	5	0	7	23	25	35	.262	.380	.436
Phillips	0	15	43	38	6	12	3	0	1	5	3	6	.316	.381	.474
Basak	0	4	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	.000	.000	.000
Thompson	-1	11	17	15	1	3	2	0	0	2	2	7	.200	.294	.333
Cano	-2	85	350	328	40	90	24	4	6	40	15	52	.274	.314	.427
Phelps	-3	36	88	80	8	21	2	0	2	12	6	19	.263	.330	.363
Damon	-4	76	313	273	44	67	10	1	5	27	38	42	.245	.339	.344
Cabrera	-5	76	299	265	31	73	9	4	4	31	22	33	.276	.331	.385
Cairo	-5	44	111	99	9	26	6	0	0	10	6	16	.263	.308	.323
Mientkiewicz	-6	50	141	124	17	28	7	0	4	16	10	16	.226	.292	.379
Abreu	-6	85	375	322	59	85	16	2	5	41	44	65	.264	.352	.373
Nieves	-7	22	53	50	2	6	0	0	0	4	2	5	.120	.154	.120

pBRaa = position-adjusted batting runs above average

Some more numbers that you may or may not find interesting:

Last	HBP	GDP	SB	CS	P/PA	BA/BIP	LD%	GB%	HR/F	BA/RISP	BR	BRaa	pBR/150
Rodriguez	9	8	9	2	3.8	.333	18.2%	41.5%	29.4%	.303	81	33	57
Posada	3	14	1	0	3.8	.395	22.7%	42.1%	11.0%	.274	55	14	37
Jeter	8	11	7	7	3.6	.380	20.8%	55.7%	7.1%	.427	60	10	24
Matsui	2	5	2	1	4.1	.290	15.8%	48.3%	12.8%	.268	45	6	17
Giambi	4	1	1	0	4.4	.302	19.1%	28.7%	11.7%	.318	26	3	5
Phillips	1	2	0	0	3.7	.355	21.9%	43.8%	9.1%	.500	6	1	5
Basak	0	0	0	0	3	.000	0.0%	0.0%	0.0%	N/A	0	0	-147
Thompson	0	0	0	0	4.2	.375	25.0%	12.5%	0.0%	.500	2	-1	-26
Cano	5	6	2	4	3.3	.313	15.2%	53.3%	6.9%	.214	41	-3	-4
Phelps	2	5	0	0	3.9	.322	21.3%	36.1%	7.7%	.280	9	-2	-24
Damon	1	0	15	0	4.4	.276	17.3%	51.9%	7.0%	.238	36	-3	-8
Cabrera	2	7	6	1	3.7	.308	19.7%	55.7%	7.1%	.234	33	-4	-10
Cairo	1	2	7	1	3.7	.317	13.6%	42.0%	0.0%	.303	11	-3	-29
Mientkiewicz	2	3	0	0	3.7	.233	23.9%	36.7%	9.3%	.200	14	-4	-28
Abreu	3	10	12	4	4.2	.325	21.5%	45.4%	5.8%	.239	45	-2	-11
Nieves	0	3	0	0	3.4	.133	13.3%	53.3%	0.0%	.214	-1	-8	-83

BR is the raw batting run total as I mentioned before, BRaa is batting runs above the average player without any position-adjustments, and pBR/150 is position-adjusted batting runs per 150 games. That really hammers home how bad Wil Nieves has been to this point. A full season of Wil Nievers would be eight wins worse than average. EIGHT WINS! That means that as as good as Alex Rodriguez has been to this point, he still wouldn't neutralize how bad Wil Nieves would be as a full-time starter. A-Rod plus Nieves would end up as 26 runs below average. Pray for Jorge's continued health.

LD% and GB% are just some batted ball numbers. Line drives are the most likely type of balls to be hits, so the higher the LD%, the better the hitter typically. BABIP is the player's batting average on balls in play, calculated the same way as it is calculated for pitchers. Hitters do exhibit repeatable skill here to a certain extent, but an excessively high BABIP typically will correct itself at least partially.

So what do these numbers mean?

As I mentioned earlier, Alex Rodriguez has been the most valuable player in the league. He's already been as valuable offensively as he was all of last year, and there are still 77 games to go. An amazing season for an amazing player who is finally getting the respect he deserves by the mouth-breathing contingent of Yankee fandom.

Jorge Posada is also having his strongest season in years. He's never hit higher than .287 but is on pace to beat that. I am worried about his workload and his luck on balls in play catching up to him in the second half, but there are plenty of people underperforming who should pick up some of the slack.

Derek Jeter continues to shine offensively. Only Carlos Guillen has been more productive as a SS in the AL.

Posada and Jeter have a very high BABIP, although in Jeter's case his speed likely helps. Posada is a very probable candidate to fall off in the second half, at least a little.

Hideki Matsui's recent hot streak has pushed him from slightly above average to +8. Unless Jason Giambi comes back, Matsui is probably the second best power threat in the Yankee lineup, so they need him to continue his surge badly.

Jason Giambi was underperforming expectations, but despite the media's claims about him being out helping the Yankees be more flexible, if he can come back he makes the team better.

Andy Phillips is making the most of his second chance in pinstripes. Whether it's just the fact that he has 43 plate appearances, or if it's the result of adjustments he's made due to his struggles last year, he's filled what's been a giant hole of suck so far this year. I'm not willing to bet that it's going to last, we have a much larger sample size that shows he was overmatched in the bigs, but at the very least he's an upgrade on Miguel Cairo.

Chris Basak and Kevin Thompson haven't played much. Thompson seems like an ideal fourth OF, so if Melky becomes entrenched in center he may end up getting some more playing time going forward.

Robinson Cano's been a big disappointment offensively. Some falloff from .342 was certainly expected, but not this much of one. He's walking a touch more this season, but he's also striking out a lot more. Until he gets a better approach at the plate, expect him to be consistently inconsistent.

Josh Phelps is gone. He didn't get a fair chance to play regularly, so it's tough to know if he wasn't very good or if the erratic playing time hurt him.

Johnny Damon has stunk while batting leadoff, so he gets more chances to stink than anyone else on the team when he's in the lineup. It doesn't look like him going on the DL is a consideration at this point. If he can play some LF going forward he can rest Matsui and perhaps contribute defensively, but the contract he signed last season is starting to look like a disaster.

Melky's seasonal output has been disappointing, but he's been hitting well since May 1. Ignore the bleating that his early struggles were due to not getting regular playing time in April, he played in 21 of 24 games that month.

Miguel Cairo has been brutal offensively, which isn't a surprise. The problem is he's played far more than he should be, primarily at a position where his lack of offense is even more glaring. Add in the fact that his calling card of good defense no longer even seems to be a factor, and he's hurting the team on both sides of the ball. I personally like Miggy for some reason that I really can't understand, but the less he plays going forward the better. I don't know that Basak would be a better option than him as the backup infielder, but it may be worth considering.

Doug Mientkiewicz has hit like garbage. His supposedly great defense at first wasn't reflected in zone rating to this point, although ZR doesn't capture all the elements of first base defense . I wish him a healthy recovery from his multitude of injuries, but I'd prefer he doesn't get back before November. I'd really prefer to see Phillips get first base for the rest of the season just to see once and for all what he's got.

Bobby Abreu has been the biggest problem on the team relative to his expectations. Unless he hits going forward, the Yankees aren't going anywhere. Meanwhile, Gary Sheffield has been tearing it up in Detroit. Brian Cashman made the right move on paper, but it didn't play out on the field. Sheffield's +18 pBRaa, so he's been 24 runs better than Abreu offensively, but he's primarily DHing now.

Wil Nieves has pulled off the amazing feat of being the least valuable offensive player on the team despite only getting 53 plate appearances. He seems like a nice guy, but the sooner the Yankees can replace him with anyone they'll be better. In praise of Nieves, he's hitting much better with runners in scoring position at a lofty .214.

Overall as a team the Yankees are +38 pBRaa. Take out Alex Rodriguez, and they're just +5. Unless Cano, Abreu and Damon play better going forward, they're not going anywhere.